It's A New Year!!! Grade 7

 I had thought we'd be diligent with school work during the Summer but.... that didn't happen.  Instead we just had fun; and that's OK.  At one point there was a natural lead into some review and I was so happily surprised that he recalled everything I asked him about.  After the end of the year, with it's nose dive into frustration and what felt like several steps in reverse, things were actually learnt and retained.  It was a really good day and I felt encouraged going into this year.  I'll probably have to hold onto that feeling in the coming months.

And now with September we're slowly sliding back into the rhythm of organised learning; very slowly.  It's not being met with joy or excitement though and I have already had the 'talk' with him about attitude and not expressing the whole pre-teen angst and sighing, eye rolling, basically the 'my world is so hard' routine that comes with asking him for something that isn't 'fun'.  But it hasn't been all bad, he was eager (despite how the picture looks, he wasn't actually in the fetal position) to do the Math Train and earn a few candies along the way.  He did really great.  54 questions, only a couple wrong after a long Summer with no other review.  I was very pleased and so was he.

 Because the public schools are all on strike right now my daughter is home too and I've taken on home schooling her for the mean time.  I used this opportunity to do review with Mckenzie by having him teach her the Continents, hemispheres, equator, Prime Meridian, Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn as well as several Oceans and Seas.  Once again he proved that he retained all the info really well.

 With eagerness we hit the library and picked out several books and a couple of DVD's, mainly on Roman and Greek mythology as we'll be studying ancient civilisations and he's chosen these to focus on; no surprise there with his love of Rick Riordan books.  We may have bitten off WAY more than we can chew.

 Rather than throwing him right into the world of writing, which is a struggle I thought we'd do some workbook English.  Last year we focused mainly on writing and it was painful for both of us.  This year I'll try to be more balanced with that.

 Today we did math from a workbook which although seemed more simplistic to me than yesterdays math, it was a slow go.  We played a game of dice and he kept score.  He did plenty of reading and we finished up with some art.  We each used water colours in any patterns or colours we wanted to completely cover a sheet of paper.  When they had dried I cut them into triangles and tomorrow we'll place them on canvas as a large collage of our art.  I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Reading Chart.

After talking to a few people about how we charted Mckenzie's reading and mentioning that there might be photos of it on the blog, I realized that indeed, I did not have any recent or complete photos of it on here.  Sooooo, here it is....  These are the books that he read between September and June.  We haven't added any new ones to it as we seem to have come to a screeching halt in the 'schooling' since Summer began.  When he and I look at this, we're both so proud and it's so encouraging and helpful to see all the work he accomplished.  These books were (all but 1) read out of his own motivation and desire.  I had nothing to do with which books, the pace, the timing etc...  It was all his own incentive.  I'm so proud of where this young man is now.  When we first started the whole reading thing in grade one the outlook was beyond grim.  It was brutally painful every night trying to simply go through letters and sounds and short beginner books.  It was a Canadian parent version of torture, for all of us.  I'm so thankful for stumbling on the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books at a garage sale.  They began the love of reading.  Slowly, picture by picture, then a few words here and there until he was reading and re-reading the books and eagerly awaiting new ones to be released.  And now here he is, reading large complicated books, usually over 500 pages and some with over 50 chapters.  Flying through them at a pace that catches us off guard every time.  His love and passion for Rick Riordan books to be specific is fantastic.  He's one book away from the last book of the last series.  Oh boy.  Since he's read The Hobbit, we just gave him the first Lord of the Rings book along with another story about the gold rush and the Yukon.  Hopefully we can find a new large series of books that he'll fall in love with - soon.

As for the rest of the Summer, well, I had high hopes for keeping up with only 2 subjects; math and Language Arts.  I've failed.  We've let it all fall by the wayside.  My thoughts are that Summer is for fun, not 'work'.  Let kids be kids.  However I wanted to try to add just a couple of really quick lessons periodically just to maintain some basic things.  I've had these hopes before, which was one of the reasons I was unsure if I'd be able to homeschool.  I could never get my act together.  Now I'm realizing that it's just a Summer thing.  We've still got some time yet, maybe I'll get one or two quick reviews in there.  OR, maybe not.  I've given up the guilt.  What will be will be.

What's Going On In That Noggin?

The answer:
XBOX
Kayaking
BMXing
Gummy worms & bears
LEGO

Mckenzie's World Adventures

A while ago I posted about Mckenzie's first stop on his world adventure which was Peru.  Next he explored Santiago Chile.  As you may remember we're following an old season of The Amazing Race and making a travel journal as though we went along on the adventure also.  

 In Santiago we took a funicular up to the top of Cerro San Cristobal to see the Virgin Mary Statue.  It was beautiful and had great scenic views.

 Here are some photos of the Statue of Neptune at Cerro Santa Lucia.  It was pretty cool since he's been reading so many Percy Jackson books and the like.

NOTE**  These are NOT our photos, I found them on google and have no idea where the original source is.

Unfortunately, our computer is no longer allowing us to share our google photos with you so you'll just have to imagine the things we saw OR you can have fun googling them just like we did.  It was fun to see the things we saw on TV come to real life as we used google maps to find them and explore them in a different way.

After Chile, we went to Argentina and went mountain biking, went to a traditional Suizo (BBQ) and ate 4 lbs of meat!!!  He then went to a ranch called Estancia San Lsidro and Cabana la Guatana where he did a gaucho challenge of riding a horse around barrels.  In Buenos Aires he searched the waterways for an old shipwreck.  He spent the night at a polo club called La Martina.

Then it was off to South Africa.  He went caving 45 feet below ground.  He shopped in an open stall market and brought his goods to an orphanage.  He also visited the street that Nelson Mandela lived on at one time.  Later he visited the Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve and fed the lions from on open vehicle!  Crazy!

Botswana was next and he learned from bushmen how to spear hunt, and also how to grind corn into powder using a tradition kika (bowl) and a pole.  It was really hard work.  He spent the night on a cot in the Makgadikgadi Pans, the largest salt pans in the Kalahari Desert.  It looked like the surface of the moon and used to be a lake before it dried up.  He visited the Kwai River where he used his land rover to help clear roads which had trees across them from elephants knocking them over.  He saw a lot of wildlife including:  elephants, ostriches, gazelles, crocodiles, zebras, giraffes, warthogs, and hippos.  He stayed at the Kwai River Lodge.

Next was India where he visited the Bara Imambara Palace and took a horse drawn carriage to a steel emporium.  He took a bike rickshaw to Alshbagh where he broke and moved 170 lbs of coal.  He took a 24 hour train ride from Lucknow India to Jodhpur and visited the Sardar Market near the clock tower.  It was fun to see a big wedding party in the streets, there were so many people, dancing and fireworks.  The next day he took part in a traditional Hindu good luck ceremony and had his head shaved.  He stayed the night near the Jaswant Thada royal tombs which are over 100 years old.

So far it's been a great adventure.  Who knows maybe one day he can do it for real!

Chalk Smudge Art

 Mckenzie's is the top one.

Candyland's Problem

With the public schools on strike I had both kids at home and that meant homeschooling both of them.  I had them brainstorm a story based on the 5 W's: Who? What? When? Where? Why?  

They came up with a fun little short story about Broccoli boy taking over Candyland.  They alternated writing and illustrating the pages(5).  I then taped the pages together length wise.  I cut the face off of a box matching the page size.  I poked holes on the sides at both top and bottom and slid pencils through.  I finished by taping the the top of the first page to the top pencil and the bottom of the last page to the bottom pencil which created a fun rolling story.  Simply twist the pencils and watch the story unfold.

Social Studies Volcano Project

When we decided to do a model volcano, we really went for it.  Here is all of Mckenzie's hard work.  We haven't blown the volcano yet.  I almost don't want to; he's put so much work into it that I think we need to enjoy it for a while.